1. Technical Field
The invention is related to image navigation, and more particularly to a system and process for navigating unstructured or loosely structured image sets displayed in clusters on a display screen.
2. Background Art
There are many applications in which the user must browse large quantities of unstructured or loosely structured images. For example, personal computer users often have folders containing digital photo collections saved on their computers. Another example is the ever growing number of large image databases, which are accessible by a computer user over a network, such as the Internet or a proprietary intranet. These images do not need to be physical images. Rather, they can be computer-generated images or models, or even text-based documents (such as word processor documents, spreadsheets or presentation slides). The image data set could even be a collection of thumbnail images of web pages that a user previously visited. In essence, the image data set can be a collection of any digital images of any kind.
Unfortunately, browsing through a large set of images can be cumbersome. In some cases the only clue as to the subject of an image is a filename. This forces a viewer to scan through a long list of filenames, which may not even be particularly descriptive of the subject of the associated image. Thus, browsing requires the viewer to guess whether a particular filename refers to subject matter he or she is interested in, and then opening or downloading the image file to display it, in order to determine if it actually pertains subject matter of interest. This can be a time consuming process in a large image database.
Some large public image databases have image files that include meta-data descriptions of the subject matter of the associated image. This facilitates a keyword search approach for finding images that would be of interest to a viewer. More sophisticated interfaces exist that allow a viewer to identify images using example images or sketches. While these keyword search and image feature schemes can be an effective way of identifying images, they do not provide the capability to “explore” the contents of a large set of images.
Another way a large set of images has been presented to a viewer is to simply display a grid of small thumbnail versions of the images. This has the advantage of giving the viewer a visual representation of the image set. However, with no organizations the viewer must scan through all the images to identify those that are of interest.
Accordingly, there is a need for a user interface that provides an organized visual representation of unstructured or loosely structured image sets that allows the viewer to efficiently browse and explore without the need to rely on filenames, keyword searches, or image features searches.